Transport of cut sheets with wet or molten images on one or both sides requires negligible interaction between the transport means and the images. Interaction between the transport system and the images may result in alteration of the images if the transport system marks the images prior to drying, solidifying, or fusing the image onto the paper. Fully non-contacting transport using air jets requires continuous closed-loop feedback and jet control to achieve sufficient control of sheet transport. Such a system can be prohibitively expensive. It is therefore a benefit of the present embodiments to provide an open loop, in the sense that no sheet position sensing is required, relatively inexpensive and virtually non-contacting means to transport sheets with wet or molten images thereon.
Interaction may also cause transfer of the marking material, such as ink or toner, to the transport system. When the transport system transports a different sheet, the marking material may transfer onto the other sheet, leaving a ghost image of the previous sheet's image on the new sheet.
In addition, cut sheets, such as individual pages of paper, may have issues related to cockling or curling of the sheets as they are transported. Generally, contactless fusing, where the media moves through a fusing process to fix the image onto the media, may involve knives of gases or vapors for heating, drying and cooling the media. For a web medium that comes in large rolls, this may not be as much of a problem because tension in the roll assists in keeping the medium flat. It may become more difficult to keep cut sheets of media flat in a contactless system.